Element of Surprise
by skeptic skeleton
Summary: "You're something, Percy Jackson." "Is that a good or bad thing?"/ In which they spend a night telling stories and bonding over blue Coke.


**Hey guys. This is my first time writing for Percy Jackson and all that, so I'm sorry if this sucks.**

**I've been into one-shots for a while, like, half of all my stories are just one-shots. So I figured why not widen my horizons a little?**

**Percy/Piper is new to me. The thought of them being together came to me when reading MOA. They just seem like that kind of fitting couple, you know? Not the It Couple, but not completely out there. Plus there is a lot of plot potential for them even if it was just a friendship or romance plotline. I'm going for an in between kind of thing.**

**Pretty much, all I'm saying is that they're likely.**

**I can't guarantee I'll be writing for this archive a lot after this. I might get struck with another idea because I support way many other pairings for this series, too, but you never know.**

* * *

She woke up after a flash of startling green. The waves, heavy as they knock against the side of the boat, soothed her as she sat up in bed. The waves, she realized, were the same color of the she had just seen.

Piper was exhausted, but she couldn't sleep. Slowly, carefully, her bare feet touched the sleek planks of the wood as she crossed her room. Once her hand lingered on the knob, Piper hesitated. The long, soundless beats later she was inching towards the kitchen. Her stomach was empty, her food from earlier that night hadn't been touched and now Piper suffered the consequences.

Her hand slid along the wall, it smooth and cold under her touch. She wasn't used to crawling around in the dark; her eyes inexperienced.

The silence—or what could be called silence with two different sets of snoring coming from down the hall—thick and unnerving, broke once Piper saw a startling pair of eyes ripping to her in the darkness.

Piper shrieked, jumping in surprise.

It was the same pair of eyes from her dream. (Or whatever the hell she was supposed to call it, Piper corrected bitterly to herself.)

"Jumpy, much?" a voiced teased, and suddenly she knew who it was.

"Percy?" Piper said astonished. "What are you doing up?" But that wasn't what she wanted to ask. What she really hoped he had the answer to was: _and why did I start to dream about you_?

Like he would know the answer.

"Same thing as you, I guess." Percy stepped into a lone streak of moonlight, letting Piper see the broad outline of his shoulders rise and fall in a shrug. Both of his hands were full—midnight snack, she assumed. Piper on the other hand, had no idea what she was awake for.

"Want a drink?"

Piper snapped her head to see a clear cup being shook towards her. It was dill halfway. In the silver light she could see a dark liquid. It sloshed up and down sloppily in the glass as Percy teased her with it; in a _kidding way_, of course. "What is that?"

"Blue Coke."

"Why is everything you eat blue?"

"Better question—why _isn't_ everything _you_ eat blue?" Percy asked coy.

"You're something, Percy Jackson."

"Is that a good of bad thing?"

Piper either couldn't or wouldn't answer the question. She couldn't figure out which. Instead her arm stretched out and let her fingers wrap around the cool glass. It damped her skin as runny drops ran down to smack her palm, wet.

She took a tiny sip. The rise of the glass to her lips was slow, dragged out as Piper waited for Percy to shout for her to stop and swipe his glass away. He never did.

Swallowing, Piper thought about how she never saw Annabeth or Percy swipe at each other's food or take a joking drink from one another's glass. The very mention of such a thing seemed forbidden between the two.

Otherwise, Piper was simply estatic that Percy felt this way toward her with his drink.

Such a stupid reason, but a reason nonetheless.

Piper handed the glass back after a small cold swallow. The Coke wooshed down her throat, and rested in a small, fizzy sea in her stomach. Her fingers, cold, rose to her lips to wipe the spare liquid from her lips. Running her tongue among her teeth and mouth in thought, an odd taste settled against the roof of her mouth. Something was...a _little _off.

"Still, what makes it blue?" she stupidly asked.

Percy chuckled rumbly and deep in his chest as he sipped his drink and ruffled her hair with his free hand. Piper scowled—so what if she didn't care what her hair looked like? He just messed up her already-there-knots and possibly made her morning a lot rougher than it needed to be.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Percy took another large gulp, leaving small like drop of Coke to remain in their lonesome at the bottom of his cup.

Piper licked her lips. "It's food coloring, isn't it?"

"...Maybe...?"

She smiled, doubtig he could see it in the dark. Jason never acted like this, Piper compared. She herself thought of them as the serious couple; herself, she knew, was pretty... _not kidding _about things and Jason wasn't any better. Sometimes she needing a laughing break.

But she couldn't help the question she asked.

"What are you worried about?"

His lips wavered just a little bit. But his smile, even though wary, remained to stay. Piper found it calming.

"A lot of things," he began, looking over her shoulder and into the distance. Because of the darkness, Piper couldn't tell if that distance was really just a wall or not. "Wise Girl is going off on her own—how can that _not _worry me? And to go off on her own in the middle of a war with the Romans trying to murder us? She's pretty much leaving me alone with a battle I don't think I can control." Percy raised his head to look straight into Piper's eyes. "I hate not having control of things."

With his messy hair, tired, but still damn alluring eyes, Piper could see the leader everyone looked up at him to be. But even the best have their downfall sometimes; she was experiencing his.

"It's okay, you know," Piper comforted gently. "To depend on someone else. If you were to ask who would go into battle with you at this very moment, do you think any one of us would say no?"

She felt pretty small when he stood to his full height.

Percy chuckled again as he ran a stressed hand through his hair. "Are you charmspeaking me?"

Her voice was simple as she responded. "No. I'm just right."

"What are your thoughts on all this?" Piper wouldn't deny that she was a bit caught off guard that he wanted to know.

But she told him.

"It's all very...fascinating," Piper decided firmly, kalidescope eyes looking out the choppy waves. They seemed to be overlapping each other in a calm choas. She couldn't tell if they were foaming or if the night sky light was playing tricks on her sleepy mind. "Like, one minute I think my life is normal, and the next I can't even remember what normal is. I've been thrown into war, given a Roman boyfriend who didn't even belong to me, and nearly killed at every corner. Did you ever get over it?"

His eyes are brighter, more..._focused_, for lack of a better word.

"Aboslutely not."

Piper nodded and crossed her arms to lean on them on the counter. The boat felt less dark, and she didn't feel like something was going to attack her anymore. But she was still confused.

_Green Eyes._

Jason was sleeping right down the hall, she noted and crossed her legs. And bit her lip. she felt the same indecision she had after cutting off her hair with the safety scissors. But this isn't as bad if she kept asking questions.

"Did you want to be a leader?"

Percy looked down at his glass in disappointment, like he wished it hadn't gone as fat as it had. "Not really," he answered with a shrug. "But you can't pick your father or his high ranking, can you?"

"But you can pretend to suck, can't you?"

He reached out to ruffle her hair, making her second scowl deeper than the first. "You really are full of questions aren't you, Pipes?"

"Possibly."

Her (slightly more than embarrassing) Cherokee pajamas seemed to laugh as she stood there, wearing them.

Piper realized she never would have cared if this was her and Jason talking.

But she and him would never talk like this because both of them were scared to act casusal.

She didn't know why.

"Is it normal to feel nervous around to people and one you kinda have to like, but the other you don't but do anyway?" Okay, she would admit that even puzzled her a little bit.

Percy blinked, his face going dark for a second. "The thing I got out of that was nervous."

"Fine, rephrase—do you feel awkward around Annabeth?"

"Since I was twelve."

"So that's a yes?" Piper confirmed as a lock of unsteadily grown hair fell into her face. She blew to shoo it away, but it stubbornly stayed in its place to sway in front of her eyes. But she didn't want to move from her position, so she let it win this time.

"I guess so..." He drawled out slowly in return, leaning on his arms as well so their faces were inches away from each other. Piper could have sworn her heart was as loud as the waves. "But to be completely honest, I have no idea what we were talking about.

"You said I was full of it, didn't you?"

His empty cup was set between them with a tiny cluck of the glass bottom against the metal counter. "I guess you're right."

Percy stood to his full height again and ruffled her hair (three times, she counted irritably) to see her fierce scowl at him as he walked around the counter calling a gentle "Night, Pipes!" behind him as he disappeared down the hall.

Basically, Piper thought as her shoulders slumped and she did a half-slide down the counter, they just kind-of-sort-of-possibly poured their hearts out to each other in some kind of way. And they were both dating someone else.

Piper barely got any sleep that night.

The only trace of what happened that night in the morning was when Percy—uncharacteristically cheerful for it being a groggy morning on board like always—called out a joking, "I love your hair, Piper!" when she walked to the table holding part of comb in her rat nest of a hair and sheepishly turning to Hazel and Annabeth to help get it out.

Because he knew that, maybe yeah, it was all his fault.

* * *

**Wow. That's the only thing I have to say to this.**

**Wow.**


End file.
